Murdoch reviews: Was it an act?

Rupert Murdoch came across as old, out of touch, and unfamiliar with even the basic workings of his company during Tuesday’s high-stakes Parliament hearing - but some suggested that was just a ruse, according to instant reviews in London and the U.S.

During nearly three hours of testimony, the News Corp. CEO, wrote the Guardian’s John Plunkett, “revealed the full extent of his ignorance” of the phone hacking scandal that has infected his British newspaper empire and threatened his hold on the company.

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“In a hesitant performance in front of MPs on Tuesday, punctuated by long pauses before many of his answers, the News Corporation chairman and chief executive said it was ‘the most humble day of my life,’” Plunkett wrote. “He appeared to have little knowledge of key events and figures who played a prominent part in events that have consumed his company.”

“It’s extremely difficult to take Rupert Murdoch’s appearance at face value,” Harnden wrote. “The man who is legendarily hands on and runs a global empire that, he said, employs 53,000 people (of which the News of the World represented one percent, he pointed out) is surely not a senile old dodderer who was blissfully aware that dark arts being practice by his journalists.”

And Michael Wolff, the Murdoch biographer and antagonist, tweeted that “the Murdochs’ know-nothing performances were all for show.”

The BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, said Murdoch’s rat-a-tat speech pattern and halting delivery came as no surprise to anyone familiar with him. Peston wrote that the hearings provided high drama but little new information.

“After today’s hearing, many questions are still unanswered about who committed or ordered the alleged hacking and bribing, and who knew what when - not least of which are the uncertainties over who was aware in early 2007 of the smoking-gun, News-of-the-World emails that were passed to the lawyers Harbottle & Lewis, but not to the police til June 20 this year,” he wrote. “That said, the Murdochs will probably be seen to have emerged bruised but not broken by today’s ordeal - which is why the share price of News Corporation, the parent company, has risen.”

Peston also wrote that James Murdoch likely helped himself with his polished performance, which he suggested could be enough to persuade directors at British Sky Broadcasting to allow him to remain as the company’s chairman.